


No Lies

by supervillainesses



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: F/F, Sapphic, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supervillainesses/pseuds/supervillainesses
Summary: Set during the final hours of Harley’s stay with Ivy in their titular episode of BTAS. After Ivy falls victim to a nightmare, Harley deals with the sad result, psychoanalyzing her in the tearful aftermath.





	

Usually, it was Harley who had bad dreams. Vivid ones, ones which could make her get out of bed, and fly around the room, throwing things and screaming and sometimes even hurting herself, still asleep. She told Ivy she didn’t remember those dreams, mostly to put her bedfellow at ease. For a reason Harley just couldn’t identify, Ivy seemed to hurt most when Harley was hurting. Not that Pam ever seemed too bothered about much of anything.

            Pam had gone to bed uncharacteristically early. The redhead usually stayed up until the wee hours of the morning in her greenhouse, slaving away until she reeked of soil and dew.

            It was as if the older woman had learned to bottle springtime and doused herself in it. Joker smelled like matches and blood and something a little zanier beneath. Drugs, for all Harley knew. Puddin’ had problems; Harley understood. It didn’t stop her from gaining a contact high in his presence.

            Pam, however, smelled like gentle mornings at the park, when Harley’s hands were little and would grasp at her mother’s dress, the effort so small it should go unnoticed, but mothers always notice their young. If Joker was her high, then Pam was her gentle slide down. Ease. That was the word for it. Being near Pam, like when she rolled over in her sleep and let Harley in close, made her muscles liquefy. Harley never realized how tightly wound she was until she found herself on Pam’s doorstep, in her bed, and her whole body would slacken. It was a special feeling, but Harley was not strong enough to give it a name.

            At the end of those long nights, Harley would move in closer to wherever her roommate would flop facedown onto the bed, and bury her face into that long, spring-scented hair. Joker was all angles and edges; Ivy was soft and pliant, it was easy to settle into the softness of her. Harley would stay there until Pam rose early in the afternoon—always first to wake, did she ever really sleep?—and Harley would pretend she was still in slumber when her roommate pulled away.

            The second rerun of _I Love Lucy_ was beginning when the screaming started.

            Screaming. Just screaming. Harley vaulted over the back of the couch, grabbed up the bat by the door, and charged upstairs to the master bedroom she and Pam shared. Only one bed, of course. When would Pam ever have visitors at Toxic Acres, Harley aside?

 

            The sight threw Harley for a loop. Pamela’s own vines engulfed the bed, binding her in place as she screamed; her eyes jammed shut and mouth so wide Harley feared her jaw might pop out of place.

            The bat fell from numb fingers. Hitting the damned things wouldn’t work; Pam was too linked to plant life as it was, hitting the ones she was actively using would probably hurt her, too. Not that Ivy wasn’t already hurting; tears were streaming out of her eyes, into that thick red hair, and finally she loosed one coherent phrase amidst all the screaming:

            “ _Kill me!_ ”

            Harley lunged forward, the vines instantly moving to thwart her. They whipped at her, the force so strong they instantly brought welts to the surface, breaking the skin on her cheeks and neck, slapping tears into her thin T-shirt.

            Ivy’s body contorted under the vines, a howl telling Harley they were likely close to cracking her ribs.

            “Ivy, wake up!” Harley squealed, just as a new leafy tendril cracked her across the face, splitting her lip; it was always tender from bruising and splitting, this was no different. A vine wrapped around her arm and flung her back out of the room. She slammed against the hallway, falling to the floor with a thud. “Ivy!”

            She wasn’t getting through. Luckily, the plants were smart, but too stupid to close the door. Harley was stupid, too, because she barreled back inside yet again. The vine which threw her—she could tell, because it had the same red, poisonous bloom at the end—snatched up her arm again. This time, Harley chose a less stupid approach. She chomped down hard on the vine; Pam yelped in agony, but it released her.

            Harley flung herself onto Pam, arms braced beside her thrashing head.

            “Ivy, wake up! Wake up!”

            Pam’s eyes opened, but they were wide and unseeing, still caught in whatever she was dreaming about.

            “Red, talk to me! What’re ya seeing?”

            “B…burns! Hurts…! Lemme go…lemme _go! Wanna die, wanna die, wanna die…_ ”

            Harley took Pam’s face in her hands. You weren’t supposed to wake people from a night terror, but this was an exception.

            “Red, listen to me,” Harley pressed her forehead to Pam’s, keeping her voice gentle as her friend screamed against her face. “I’m right here. I’m _here_. This is a _dream_. Nothing’s gonna hurt you. I’m right here. Not gonna hurt ya, Red. C’mon. You’re okay. I gotcha.”

            The screaming slowly subsided into animalistic grunts. Harley could feel the vines begin to loosen, but Pam’s expression was still held tight in a mask of pain.

            “C’mon, Red. You’re okay.” Harley repeated the words Pam so often spoke to her after one of her dreams. “You’re safe. You’re home. You’re home, Pamela.”

            Ivy’s sweet breath became slow bursts against Harley’s face. She watched, gratefulness swelling inside of her, as consciousness settled into Pam’s features. Conscious, but bewildered. Harley let out a small chuckle, aware of her own tears as she wiped Pam’s away.

            “W-what happened?”

            “Almost lost ya, Pam.” Harley answered, using the other sleeve of her shirt to wipe away her own tears. “Almost lost ya for good.”

            She sat back on Pam’s lap, shucking the loose vines from the bed onto the floor. They coiled up and slithered out of the window, closing it behind them. Courteous, after what they’d done to their mistress. She frowned at Pam’s bare legs. No blanket, again. Red was thoughtless about those kinds of things, the things that meant she was taking care of herself. Then again, Harley was self-aware enough to know she was similarly thoughtless, but that was okay. She and Red didn’t need to take care of themselves; they could take care of each other.

            “I…thought I was somewhere else,” Pam confided in a small voice as Harley dragged the duvet over their cold forms—Pam from sleeping uncovered, Harley from fear. The reality of what could have happened sank into her as she watched sidelong Ivy regain control of her breathing. “I forgot where I was, who I was with.”

            “And you know where and who now?”

            “Gotham City. Toxic Acres. Vaguely murderous cutesy blonde.”

            “OMG, cutesy, really?” Harley touched one of her pigtails, but shook her head. “Stop distracting me. You’re really all right?”

            Pam palpated her sides with careful fingers. “Nothing broken. It’s so bizarre. That’s never happened before.”

            “It wasn’t something…outside? Like someone _else_ hurtin’ ya?”

            “No,” Ivy put a hand over her face, still panting. “No. This was all me.”

            “ _Why?_ What scared ya so much you’d attack yourself in your sleep?” Instinctively, Harley went to bite her lip, but yelped when she recalled too late that it had been hit in the brief grapple with Ivy’s powers. Ivy shot up to examine her. “I’m _fine_ , Red! This, this is all outside. I’m worried about what’s happening to you _inside_.”

            “My _inside_ right now is worried about your outside—that sounded far more sexual than I meant it to, whoops.” Pam put herself into scientist mode; Harley could hear it in the bemused tone as she observed the minute lacerations on her skin. She frowned. “You’re too good at internalizing your pain. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt. Learn to put a voice to your feelings.”

            Harley drew her arm harshly out of Pam’s hands. “Pot to the kettle, Red? Or are you actually talking to yourself for once?”

            “I have no idea what you’re implying.”

            “Of _course_ you don’t. You took me in, God, three months ago? I don’t know a damn thing about you! What’s your favorite color? Where did you go to school? Ya a cat or a dog person? How _old_ are you?”

            “Are you this demanding with him?” Pam’s voice was tired, above anything else. “Give me back your arm. Come on. I’ll be gentle.”

            Firming her bottom lip, Harley jutted the arm back out again. She watched as Ivy’s hand developed an oily sheen at the fingertips, and she dabbed the slivers of broken skin so gingerly there was almost no proof of contact. They stung like burns for a fraction of a second before becoming tingly and numbed. Ivy’s powers were astounding.

            “It’s the same toxins I secrete from my lips and saliva,” Pam noted to her. “Anyone else on the planet, and they’d be dead. Because you’ve been immunized, they’re allowed to work on you like they work on me.”

            “Guess I should count myself special. No,” Harley answered quietly, allowing Pam to roll up her other sleeve as well and repeat what she’d done to the opposite arm. “Mr. J doesn’t _like_ questions. If ya lucky, you won’t get an answer.”

            Pam looked up at Harley through her lashes. “And if you’re not lucky?”

            “Look, I know Puddin’ ain’t the best. Love ain’t about taking people at their best, y’know. Sometimes you just _love_ someone. Don’t matter what they did, or what they’ll do, but you look at them and ya think: Oh, that’s it, that’s where I’m meant to be.”

            “So, that’s it, then? Joker is your home, is that what you’re telling me?”

            “Um,” Harley bit her lip again, swallowing back her yelp as she tasted the familiar metallic flush of blood on her tongue. “I’m saying that Puddin’s the person I know can _be_ that someone. I just have to break through to him, that’s all.”

            “Do you even know his name?” Pam arched a brow, finishing up her treatment.

            “He left it all behind him; he’s just Joker.”

            Ivy laughed mirthlessly. “Won’t tell you his name? What about his birthday? Has he ever told you he loves you?”

            “Ivy, stop!” Harley snapped, drawing back again. “We’ve been through this! You think Joker is a massive pile of shit. I get it.”

            “No, you don’t.” Pam sighed, lying back down. “Let’s drop it, all right? I’m too tired for this old argument.”

            “Well, then I hope you aren’t too tired for talking about the real problem at hand, Red. Why would your plants attack _you?_ Unless…unless they weren’t _attacking_ you. You said you forgot _where_ you are, Red. Crane told me ya got your powers in a…not nice way. Red, were they reenacting something?”

            “You were an Arkham doctor, right? Surely, you’ve seen my files. Especially with the way the _men_ liked to pass them around, laughing at every detail.”

            Harley remained quiet. She could never defend the actions of the Arkham Asylum staff without being hypocritical.

            “Yeah, okay. Fine. Every now and again, I’d listen in on the gossip about patients in the old building. Not often, but it was hard to brush off the older colleagues when they slunk around the water cooler and invited me in for small talk. I couldn’t say no, Ives. In a place like that you make connections or get canned, especially if you’re a chick that won’t let them get close enough to look down your shirt at _your_ cans, if you get what I’m sayin’.”

            “I do,” Pam murmured. “I was a scientist, remember? A woman in yet another male-dominated field.”

            “But I always tried to tune out the stuff about the really hurt ones. Like Freeze and Two-Face McSplit-Sides.” She paused, waiting for Ivy to chuckle as she always did when Harley poked fun at her ex-boyfriend. “And you.”

            “You’re telling me you know nothing about me?” Pam propped herself up by the elbows. “At all?”

            “Y’thought I _did?_ How could I? Your mouth’s a friggin’ Fort Knox!”

            “I meant _before_ you saved my hide back at the museum,” that she was giving Harley credit was a monumental step, but toward what Harley couldn’t be sure of or dwell on at the moment. “You mean you agreed to come stay with me even though you could have been hitching a ride on the Murder Express?”

            “Well, you saved my hide, too, Red.” Harley shrugged.

            “You wouldn’t have been caught if I were half as flexible as you, otherwise I would never have tripped the alarms.”

            “Ain’t talking about the heist; I didn’t have nowhere to go when Puddin’ threw me out, but now I’m here, and I don’t have to worry about that no more.”

            Ivy’s face occluded with an emotion Harley wanted to label as sadness, but surely that wasn’t right. What could make Poison Ivy sad, aside from the slow decay of the Earth?

            “How long were you on the streets before we found each other, Harley?” Pam leaned up, tracing a cut on Harley’s cheek she’d missed with a gentle thumb, but she didn’t take her hand away, and Harley didn’t move it. “How long were you lost?”

            “Days.” Harley’s breathing quickened as she tried to squash down the urge to cry again. She couldn’t burden Red with her feelings when she was trying to get her to talk about her own. “A week, maybe? Doesn’t matter. I’m tough.”

            “You’re about as tough as a toasted marshmallow, Harl. You’re strong, but _tough_ is not the word. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

            “‘Wow, kind hot-chick, thanks a ton for letting me into ya home! Lemme go in on a long story of how my boyfriend kicked me out, and how sad I’ve been, and how cold I was on the streets, and how many hobos I had to punch in the face, and how much food I had to steal—’”

            “Don’t make fun of yourself like that,” Pam snipped, startling Harley. “I would have listened, you know. To every word. How heartless do you think I am?”

            “Not at all,” Harley insisted. “ _Now_. But it’s okay, Red. Ya found me. I’m okay.”

            “I wish I’d found you sooner.”

            “What, now you’re gonna kick yourself for not changing fate at the drop of a hat? Why d’ya think we were robbing the same place at the same _time_ , Red? It was fate.”

            “We found each other when we needed each other.”

            “Yeah,” Harley nodded, then blinked. “Wait, what? You mean the bank thing again?”

            “You just saved my life, Harley. You did what I clearly couldn’t do. Do you really think so little of yourself? Surely, that was fate, too.”

            “Well, I _guess_ , but I just did the only thinkable thing, Red.”

            “You did it, even though you could have died…” Pam touched her own chin with her fingers, her expression pondering, as if puzzling out her own words as she said them.

            “Gee, I didn’t think of that!” Harley squeaked, thinking back moments ago. “I just…I just _went_ , y’know? Didn’t wanna see you hurting, or _worse_ , I didn’t wanna lose you, too.”

            “Jason Woodrue.”

            “Huh?”

            “That was his name. Please, don’t make me say it again.” Ivy’s eyes moved to the bedspread. “He was the one who…did _this_ to me.”

            “Oh,” Harley said quietly, curling her legs up to her chin. “Oh. How did he…I mean, what did he…?”

            “He…was a professor I worked under. He was brilliant. He knew things about plants no mortal should. I was so easily entranced; plants, they’ve been my everything for as long as I can remember.”

            “I never understood that,” Harley spoke up, speaking from around the thumbnail she had clenched in her teeth. “I mean, I understand you _like them_ , but why so hardcore?”

            Ivy drew in a breath. “Can I ask something of you?”

            “Sure, Red. Anything.”

            “You’re not even going to ask what it is first?”

            “Well,” Harley fidgeted. “I know you won’t ever ask me to do something that’ll hurt me, so…”

            “Can we,” Ivy stopped, lying back down again, both hands over her face this time. “Can we pretend, just for right now, just for tonight, that we’re not Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy?”

            “I don’t know whatcha mean…”

            “I don’t think I do, either,” Red breathed. “Just…pretend this is Arkham. I’m Pamela Isley, and you’re Dr. Quinzel, and I just had a regressive nightmare brought on by past trauma. Is that the right therapist lingo? You’d know better than I would.”

            “You’re asking me to see you as a _patient?_ ” Warmth and fear ballooned inside Harley, battling for supremacy. “Y-ya trust me enough to do that?”

            Ivy’s lips, always slightly tinged green from her special lipstick, twitched just a bit into a smirk. “I think it will be hard for you to do more damage, Harl.”

            “That’s _Dr. Quinzel_ , to you, Pamela.” Harley reached into the bedside table and slid on glasses she never wore, but always kept around. There was fluttering in her chest as she groped her hair back into a bun, a style she hadn’t worn in years; it was like a whole host of butterflies just couldn’t decide where to land. “Now, then, your connection with plants, would you say it started back in childhood?”

            “Yes,” Pam said slowly. “For as long as I can remember. My mother got me started. Her garden was my first garden.”

            “What sort of things would you do with those plants? Water them? Collect them?”

            “Cut them?! You’re asking if I would cut down my beautiful—! Oh, I guess I’m too far in character, Harl.”

            “Dr. Quinzel.”

            “Dr. Quinzel,” Pam grumbled, her hands gone but her eyes still closed. “I would care for them, water them, even speak to them.”

            “Speak to them? About what?”

            “Anything. Anything and everything. Flowers can’t speak back to you, and if they can, you’re a child, and you can make them say the sweetest things. Good things. Things that won’t hurt.”

            “And what sort of _hurtful_ things were you so adamant they wouldn’t say?”

            “They would ask me if I did well in school that day. They would kiss my hands in the breeze with their petals and leaves, and tell me I was a pretty girl, a smart girl. They’d tell me I could be anything, anyone.”

            “Lovely, but what would you say to _them_ , Pamela?”

            “I’d…I would tell them about my parents.”

            “Oh?” Harley’s brows furrowed, feeling her persona slip away, replaced with real caring. “What about them?”

            “Harley,” Pam opened her eyes, the dull light from the window behind the headboard reflected in the green, making them luminous and ghostly behind the sheen of tears. The sight struck Harley so intensely; she was glad Pam hadn’t turned to see her and the stricken expression on her face. “This is just because I’m exhausted, okay? I’m not weak. I’m tired, and hurting, and tired and hurting people say things they shouldn’t, right?”

            Harley slid her hand into Pam’s. “Right, Red.”

            It was impossible. Impossible to forget who they were, and what they’d become. Harleen Quinzel was Harley Quinn. Pamela Isley was Poison Ivy. Together they were Harley and Ivy. It was the way of things. Harley just wanted Pam to speak before she walled up her feelings inside the carefully spun cocoon that was Poison Ivy yet again. Tonight would be different. The air quivered and quaked with change.

            For a long second, the only thing to be heard was Pam’s shuddering breath as she quietly sobbed, eyes glued to the ceiling, as if determined not to look at Harley.

            “I would talk to the flowers, and tell them that I wished I could be one of them. I wish I could have been born something small, and insignificant, something that was out of the way. Or…”

            “Or?” She didn’t want her to stop speaking. If she did stop, Harley doubted she would ever speak again.

            “Or that I was never born at all. I pretended I didn’t see, for so long. Those bruises on my mother’s face, they weren’t there. They were a trick of the light. She walked into something. Dad just got over-zealous and couldn’t keep his feelings inside. He loved Mom. Loved her so much it boiled over and he couldn’t contain it. I couldn’t hate him for so long, not until the night Mom disappeared, and the morning after when my garden outside had its flowers uprooted, and a new, five-foot spot lay barren.

            “I vowed to myself, _swore_ to myself, that I would never end up that way. I’d never lay myself open to the mercy of a man to be buried beneath the soil of something I’d tilled with my own hands. But I was foolish, careless. I let him whisk me away in talks of saving the planet, flora outweighing fauna, and I let him do things… _allowed_ him into places, parts of me I’m not proud of. I let him in, in every human sense, and he stole my humanity from me.

            “I think that was why I let you in, Harl.” The words were hardly more than an exhale. You’re so much like I was, back then, when I was small, and my little hands would grasp around the roots of the flowers that had grown back over the bald space in my gardens my father made, wishing I had the courage to yank them up and unearth what he’d hidden there. I’ve seen your bruises, darling. I’ve heard what you fight against in your sleep. I feel the pain you wish you could inflict on _him_ when you lash out in your nightmares. I know your pain, and I know your fear.

            “And I don’t want you to disappear,” Pam rolled her head over now, letting her tears spill onto the pillow as she looked at Harley, discovering that her blue eyes matched the green that stared into them. “They, this whole world, Harl. It’s all trash. Everyone is ruined and sick and rotted-through. But not you. You’re bright, and warm, and sweet, despite everything that’s been done to you. That’s where our similarities end, sugar. The roof could come crashing down on you, but you’d still love the house you’d been living in. I don’t know if you’ve ever been told this before, but you’re…you’re so brave, Harley.”

            “Nuh-uh,” Harley shook her head, wiping at her tears with the backs of her palms. “You don’t even know, Red. How many people I’ve hurt, how many people I’ve let down. I’ve done so many bad, bad things since I fell for Joker. Too many bad things. I see them when I sleep. My hands are covered in blood, always will be.”

            Hands took Harley’s away from her eyes, and Harley could see only the pale expanse of Pam’s face, her eyes puffy and red, her lips dry and cracked in a small, sad smile.

            “You’re no Lady Macbeth, Harl. You’re too good for such a tragic end.”

            “I dunno who that is,” Harley huffed quietly, distraught and full of tangled feelings. They twisted and tightened to bursting when Pam raised Harley’s hand to her lips, and kissed the skin of her knuckles.

            “Your hands look clean to me,” Pam brushed a bit of Harley’s hair out of her face. “Is this what you looked like as a doctor? I’m amazed your colleagues got any of their work done.”

            “I look dorky,” Harley moved to remove the frames from her face, but Pam wouldn’t release her hands. “I was a huge dork, before I became Harley Quinn. I was popular with boys, but I couldn’t keep ’em. Some just kinda saw me as another guy, and the ones that _did_ wanna be around me only wanted me for my boobs, and ran off whenever I wanted to talk about sociology with them. College wasn’t any better. I studied so hard I’d get sick; I wouldn’t sleep or eat right. I was there because of my gymnastics scholarship, but I just…I wanted to have a talk show, or write the next big book on criminal psychology. I had to prove myself. I ended up leaving the school on…not-so-good terms.”

            “How so?”

            “Slept my way to the top,” Harley smiled, but even to herself it felt forced, too wide for her face, like a doll with the mouth painted on too widely to be seen as cute. Her tears slide over her cheeks, into her mouth. “I didn’t want to, I didn’t want any of them, but I did it anyway. I knew I couldn’t make it. I just knew it. I was too dumb. Ma and Pop always knew it, my classmates knew it. I was a big pretender. I’ve been making stupid decisions since I was born.”

            “You aren’t stupid, Harl.”

            “I thought you said no lies?”

            “I did. I mean it. You aren’t stupid. Careless, yes, but only about yourself. You care too much about others. When was the last time you did something for yourself?”

            “I went away with Puddin’, that was for me.”

            “Was it?” Pam arched a brow. “You told me you felt sorry for him, after hearing his sob-story about the circus incident with his father, and his _lies_ about his abuse. Is pity really love?”

            “I mean it! I became Harley Quinn for me! I don’t feel nearly so helpless or dumb when I’m in that costume!”

            “No one’s denying you’re phenomenal as Harley Quinn, but you’re dodging the question, doll. What have you done for _you_ these past few years?”

            Harley looked down, her cheeks red as she pursed her lips. “I got to be close with you, didn’t I?”

            “What?”

            Harley looked up to find Pam’s expression obliterated into that of utter surprise. She looked so pretty like that, with all the green of her eyes exposed and glittering, and her full lips slightly parted. She called Harley a doll, but Pam looked like one herself.

            “I’ve never seen you with my glasses on before, Red.” Harley leaned in a bit closer; unsure of what she intended to do. “You’re so pretty.”

            Pam recovered from her shock quickly, scoffing softly. “I know, Harl.”

            “I don’t mean, like, _I’m a guy and I wanna drill ya_ pretty, I mean… _pretty_. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so pretty. You’re like a real life flower. You’re amazing.”

            A blush, like the tint of roses, played at the surface of Pam’s cheeks. The color, beside her red hair, was such a striking blend it stole Harley’s breath at both the sight and the rarity of it. She should invest in contact lenses. Looking at Joker was different than looking at Pam. Everything between the two of them was different. Joker was sharp and boney, like he was chiseled from flint. Pamela was round and soft, sweetly scented like a flower made human.

            “My lips, Red.”

            “What?”

            “You forgot to fix my lips, when you were healing me up.” Harley was hot from head-to-toe, all too aware of what she was asking for, but she couldn’t stop it, the need for this next step. It would change their course, but to where, Harley didn’t know. She was scared, but the fear thrilled her. There, at last, was the similarity between her Puddin’ and her Red. “If I asked ya, right now, to make it better, how would you do it?”

            “Like this, Harl.”

            The kiss, at first, was swift and practiced. Harley had seen Pam kiss dozens of guys in the time they were in partnership alone, rendering them into useless piles of infatuated mush at the touch. The kiss shouldn’t have had that effect on her, yet the instant the cool, minty lips met hers, Harley was utterly undone. Even being one of her stock kisses, as kiss to make Harley well, rocketed her to the moon.

            The salve Pam’s lips secreted numbed her mouth just the faintest bit, but when the feeling set in again, so did they. The second kiss was unpracticed, unpolished. Pam’s tongue was awkward and lost against Harley’s. Harley was lost as well. She always had to maul Joker for so much as a receptive peck, and she realized that, like Pam, she had kissed quite a few guys as well, but had fallen out of practice when it came to kissing with any kind of reciprocated feeling.

            It was awful, and yet it was perfect.

            Ivy parted first, her eyes glazed over, and finally, she seemed to succumb to her fatigue after her nightmares, the beating, the tearful admittances.

           “I could be your home, Harley.” Pam nuzzled her nose against Harley’s jaw. “All you’d have to do is ask.”

           Pam nestled back into the pillows, as if she hadn’t even spoken a word, a phrase that shook Harley’s world so hard she doubted any buildings were left standing within her.

            Harley sat up alone in the quiet dark a long while. Moving only to take her hair down and remove the glasses. She stared down at them in the half-light of the streetlamps outside the curtained window, thinking of a time gone by, of opportunities wasted, of a tangle of red hair behind a Plexiglas wall as she moved through Arkham, choosing her first patient.

            “Oh, Red,” Harley sobbed quietly in the dark, her fingers at her healing lips, “what have I done?”

            Next chance she got, she would use Ivy’s phone. She would call up her Mr. J; get back to where she belonged. Red deserved someone better, someone who didn’t go back on her word so easily. Someone who could choose her first, and take her from that barren garden her father and Jason Woodrue had uprooted, and plant her somewhere safe, in warm sunlight and lush soil.

            She deserved so much more than Harley Quinn.

            “Harl,” blindly, Pam reached out, and placed a hand on Harley’s arm. “Hold me. I’m cold.”

            Harley sucked in a breath, and wrapped herself around Ivy from behind. Next chance she got. Next chance she got. Next chance she got.

            _Oh, Pamela_ , Harley closed her eyes, letting her mind trail yet again to a road not taken, a road she could easily walk down again. _What have I done?_

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the first fic I've posted without page breaks lmao.


End file.
